Disability inclusion in Western Kenya: Key findings from county budget data

This series of publications forms part of Development Initiatives’ (DI’s) work on data to support disability inclusion. Working as part of the Inclusive Futures consortium, DI reviewed the budgets of five counties in Kenya – Bungoma, Busia, Kakamega, Trans Nzoia and Vihiga – from financial year (FY) 2016–17 to FY2020–21 to investigate disability inclusion in the regions. The key findings from the five county briefings, as well as a background overview and legislative and policy contexts, are presented in a synthesis report.

Key findings from the analysis include:

• All five counties spent, on average, 0.1% of their total budgets on disability inclusion
• Across all five counties, budget lines specifically targeted to supporting persons with disabilities were low in number and were not consistently allocated funding across the period under review
• County government departments focusing on gender, culture, youth, sports and social services received the bulk of the disability budget in all five counties
• Vihiga county, which had the highest reported disability prevalence rate of all five counties, spent the most on disability inclusion and its budget had more budget lines specifically related to disability inclusion than any of the other counties.

Key recommendations for county governments and disabled persons organisations (DPOs) include:

• Build knowledge of county planning and budgeting processes and cycles among persons with disabilities and their representative DPOs
• Build knowledge of disability-inclusive legislation, planning, budgeting and implementation processes and appropriate language to use with persons with disabilities among all county departments (including the governor, county executive officials and members of county assemblies)
• Carry out continuous disability-inclusive reviews of development plans and budgets to improve accountability and ensure inclusion
• Develop a disability policy or review existing policies to ensure they are disability inclusive.

Each briefing:

• Identifies the key challenges to analysis, such as lack of disaggregated data and unavailability of budget reports for some FYs
• Summarises the critical funding gaps uncovered by the review
• Concludes with a list of recommendations for county governments and DPOs, focused on increasing disability inclusivity and improving availability of budget data for future analysis.